Stakeholder Identification and Analysis

Landscape condition and sustainability depends on what its stakeholders are doing. ILM practitioners cannot, therefore, avoid considering stakeholder activities. The problems exhibited in landscapes emerge out of these activities, so implementing processes that change stakeholder behaviours and practices is central to ILM considerations. It is generally accepted that the higher the level of stakeholder engagement, the more likely an intervention is to succeed, and the more likely its effects will be sustainable.

Landscapes, it should be noted, are complex –and stakeholders are a source of much of this complexity because of their multiple, and often divergent, needs and interests (i.e., to exploit or conserve resources), rights (formal and customary) and levels of legitimacy, dependence on resources, power and influence (economic and political), knowledge, preferences and values. Stakeholders often have competing goals that require mediation to balance trade-offs (if an initiative is promoting changed behaviour) and are embedded within social networks, interactions and responses. If landscapes are to be managed in integrated ways, stakeholders and their various interests must be a major consideration in the design of ILM interventions.

Key messages

• Stakeholder engagement is a precondition to Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) success. The higher the level of engagement, the greater the likelihood of success and sustainability.
• Stakeholder identification and analysis is complicated by diversity amongst stakeholders, which emerges from variable interests, different types of knowledge, and contexts. Most stakeholder engagement, identification and analysis approaches try to reveal and understand this complexity.
• Stakeholder analysis is strategic. It allows interventions to determine who they should engage with to succeed and which inter-stakeholder relations should be targeted for attention.
• The ‘strategic relevance’ of stakeholders is determined by the degree to which they are judged to influence a project’s success.
• There are usually competing or contradictory interests among stakeholders, often expressed as conflict. The presence of conflict amongst stakeholders should be assumed from the outset and can represent a significant risk to intervention success.
• The strategies used to engage with (and between) stakeholders will reflect their strategic relevance and can be brainstormed and deliberated through the development of a Theory of Change.
• Engaging with stakeholders calls for the deployment of ‘soft-skills’ such as mediation, facilitation, convening and negotiation.
• Stakeholder relevance and relations will change over the course of a project intervention. As such, stakeholder analysis is not restricted to the beginning of an initiative, but is necessary throughout its duration.